We were relieved when we made it off in one piece at 4am, even it was the middle of the night and we had no real idea of where. After some haggling with a bunch of rickshaw drivers we took what ended up to be a ridiculously short ride to the train station. That gave us a little bit of a giggle.
We were in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat which is a wealthy, resourceful state that the locals always think I am from. Gujaratis are renowned for their entrepreneurial skills both here and abroad and they say that most Non-Resident Indians, NRI, you encounter will most likely be from here. In order to get to Jalgaon (our stop for the Ajanta caves) we had to get the train at 6am, so we had a couple of hours to kill.
The wait at the train station was quite pleasant as it was clean and organised with food stalls, chai wallas and hardly anybody even gave us a second look. We were pretty tired though and were looking forward to lying down on the train. Once we boarded the train we stuck our earplugs in and covered our faces with sarongs and had a few hours kip. It was to be a long train journey so there was little to do except eat, sleep and read. The scenery started to become more green and made a welcome change to the desert of Rajasthan. Matt managed to get a couple of good photos of the hard working locals (with their kids in tow) on the train lines.
Almost 20 hours and 850km after we left Udaipur we arrived in Jalgaon and booked into a hotel near the train station. It is a fairly random town with virtually nothing in it apart from a fantastic restaurant where we had a great Chinese meal. This was a lovely surprise and Matt was adamant that the spring rolls were the best he has ever tasted! After a good nights sleep and an early rise, we set off on the local bus to the Ajanta Caves.
It was a weekend so we arrived at the caves with everyone else and their cousin.
A World Heritage Site, the Buddhist caves of Ajanta are said to be the Louvre of central India and date from around 200 BC to AD 650. As Buddhism waned the beautiful caves were abandoned and forgotten until 1819 when a British hunting party stumbled upon them.
The 30 caves are cut into the steep face of a horseshoe-shaped rock gorge on the Waghore River and makes for a spectacular setting.
The isolation of the caves contributed to the fine state of preservation in which some of the paintings are today along with the seemingly impressive work that the State is doing to keep this site as spiritual and special as it was intended. We were both very impressed with what we saw....
The superb lighting in the caves provided a beautiful setting in which to see the amazing architecture and sculptures that were carved thousands of years ago.
There were some stunning pieces of art painted on the ceilings and walls of the caves (known as tempera as the artists used animal glue and vegetable gum to bind them to the dry surface).
Each cave represented something different and although it was interesting I can’t remember much so I think the pictures are enough for now...
There is a viewpoint across the river and up a hill so while Matt sat at the bottom of the stairs (lazy sod) and chatted to the jewellery-wallahs and crystal rock-wallahs, I climbed the small hill for the views.
After some lunch we had to catch another bus down to Aurangabad which was to be our base from which to explore the Ellora Caves from. These were supposed to be similar to the Ajanta caves but better according to our book (‘the pinnacle of Deccan rock-cut architecture’) and showed a variety of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain architecture. We had to wait for our bus at the side of the road in the blazing heat and flag the right one down.
A couple of hours later we were checked into a very basic hotel in Aurangabad and set about planning our next day which also happened to be New Year’s Eve. We had previously agreed that we weren’t going to worry about doing anything on NYE as we didn’t know where we would be so that took the pressure of us to be somewhere in particular and we thought to ourselves that we would just ‘be where we would be’ on NYE. So we started looking at the limited options available to us. Aurangabad itself is a Muslim city and we realised that there wouldn’t be anything to do unless we went for a fancy package deal at the one of the fancy and very pricey hotels. We slept on the idea and the thought of spending a lot of money. In the morning I had a brain wave and found out about hotels near the Ellora caves. There were a couple that sounded pretty good so I promptly called. It turned out that the better sounding one had a cottage overlooking the caves for a reasonable price so we booked in and packed a small bag for the night.
We set off in a rickshaw (that we had hired for the day at a reasonable price) and combined the sightseeing along with getting to Ellora and the hotel. We hadn’t actually given the other sights in the area a second thought but decided to visit them based on the suggestion of the hotel owner and we were glad we did.
Our first stop was the ‘Poor Man’s Taj’, known as the Bibi-Qa-Maqbara. It was built in 1679 for Aurangzeb’s wife and the comparison to the Taj is ironic considering it was Aurangzeb’s father who built the Taj Mahal shortly before being overthrown and imprisoned by his son on account of his extravagance! We thought it was actually quite beautiful and had a lot of charm! There was hardly anybody there which was a bonus, unlike the Taj Mahal.
Next was the Daulatabad Fort, a giant imposing fort built on an isolated pyramid-shaped natural mountain peak 200m above sea level. Now we don’t usually go for forts but our hotel man claimed that this fort was truly magnificent and it had never been conquered (apart from the one when time the gatekeeper was bribed) because of its’ ingenious series of defences. We were curious and it was on the way.
The fort is a combination of a ground fort and hill fort (quite rare in India) and the rock around the fort is chiselled so skilfully that climbing the fort was almost impossible. The arrangements of the gates at the entrance also worked as a defence strategy as they were not opposite each other and thus the practice of using elephants to break down the doors was impossible here.
Although the fort is in ruins it is actually quite interesting.
Along with that, the setting is peaceful and the 45 minute walk up to the summit of the hilltop fortress rewarded us with some very fine views of the surrounding countryside.
On the way up we crossed the bridge over the 20m deep wet moat which had two dams constructed in it to control the water. In this way, the water level could be increased above the level of the bridge thus ‘sinking’ the bridge. There are two bridges over the moat and in earlier times one of the bridges was made of leather so it could also be rolled up if needed. Oh, and the moat was also teeming with crocodiles!
After crossing the bridge we were guided by a man with a flame into an elaborate ascending zig-zag underground passage. It was pitch black apart from the flame and it was about 50 metres long. As we carefully zig-zagged through our guide explained that there were a couple of tunnels that attackers could get lost in and disorientate themselves and hopefully kill each other in their confusion as they ended up going head long into each other. There was a small opening for light and air which could mislead the enemy and cause him to fall straight into the moat. This opening was also used to pelt stones at the attackers from above and last but not least, there was a large hot pan kept on the exit of the passage, just in case they were to get through! Quite amazing really.
After reaching the summit we had a short stop then made our way down and out for a thali at the local cafes opposite the fort which was delicious. I bought a coconut to drink from and some fruit to munch on for the rest of our journey and we jumped in to our auto for the ride to the Ellora Caves.
Upon reaching the caves and the hotel, we thanked our auto man and checked into our cottage (which we were really pleased with!) and walked down to the Ellora caves. It was a lot busier than we expected and much more touristy than the Ajanta caves and is set up differently. Ellora has 34 caves (Buddhist, Hindu and Jain). Over five centuries; generations of monks have carved monasteries, chapels and temples from a 2km stretch of escarpment. As the escarpment is on a gentle slope, opposed to the sheer drop at Ajanta, many caves have elaborate courtyards in front of the main shrines. The masterpiece is the spectacular Kailasa Temple, dedicated to Shiva and is the world’s largest monolithic sculpture built into the rock by over 7000 workers over a 150 year period! It didn't look like much from the outside..
So it was even more impressive when you entered and realised what was behind. Three trenches were cut into the cliff face and the shape was ‘released’ with tools and entailed removing 200,000 tonnes of rock!
Around the temple there are carved panels depicting scenes from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the adventures of Krishna and many people come to pray in the main shrine as it is a functioning temple.
The caves at Ellora are more spread out and involve either a very long walk, or (seeing as there is a road built right next to it which is a shame) a few rides in autos. So seeing as it was NYE (we wanted a drink at sunset for sure) and we were a bit caved out we went for the second option. The rest of the caves were still pretty amazing but not, we felt, as spiritual or as beautiful as the ones at Ajanta. It was, however, still interesting to see the different styles of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain architecture.
We managed to make it back to our cottage in time for sunset (not before being begged to buy something from a very persistent young boy who was selling little stone boxes and elephants) and got some beers in to have in our very own patio. And a bottle of bubbly. Very nice.
The evening was quiet and we had a lovely evening on the patio watching the impressive flames of some scrub burning on the side of the hill before heading off to bed way before midnight (the first in a long time). We awoke the next day refreshed and happy after a great night’s sleep and ready for breakfast on the patio!
Happy New Year to one and all.
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